Who This Helps
This is for junior analysts who need to ship clean analysis with clear recommendations. It’s part of the Founder Finance Basics Mission Pack, which helps you understand unit economics, runway, and reporting for calm founder decisions.
Mini Case
Ben’s revenue was up 15% last quarter, but his cash balance was flat. He was about to launch three new marketing experiments. Instead, he ran a quick unit economics snapshot. He found one channel had a Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) of $120, but the average customer was only worth $90 in their first year. That’s a leaky bucket. He paused that channel, saving $8k a month, and focused his next experiment on improving the value of those customers.
Do This Now (5 Steps)
- Grab last month’s marketing spend and new customer count.
- Calculate your simple CAC: Total Spend / New Customers.
- Find your average revenue per customer (for the same period).
- Compare them. Is your CAC lower than the revenue? If not, you have a problem.
- Use this one-page truth to recommend pausing the worst channel and testing one fix for the best channel. Your job is to find the leak before pouring more water in.
Avoid These Traps
- Don’t get lost in perfect data. Use good-enough numbers from last month to make a fast decision.
- Avoid averaging all channels together. One bad channel can drown out the good ones. Look at them separately.
- Don’t just report the CAC number. Always pair it with the customer value and a clear ‘so what’ recommendation.
- Stop brainstorming 10 new experiments before checking if your current ones are even profitable. That’s like adding more ingredients to a burning cake.
Your Win by Friday
By Friday, you can hand your lead a one-page unit economics snapshot card. It will show which current growth effort is actually losing money and where to focus the next experiment for the biggest impact. You’ll move from just showing data to driving the decision.